George Abram Miller, 1921 MAA President

George Abram Miller was a mathematics professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign interested in group theory and history of mathematics. He was heavily involved with the American Mathematical Monthly and published extensively.

Education and Career

After receiving his Ph.D., Miller was an instructor at the University of Michigan. He lived for two years with F.N. Cole, who inspired his lifelong interest in group theory. From 1895 to 1897, Miller attended group theory lectures by Lie and Jordan in Europe.

Miller began his involvement with the American Mathematical Monthly with a series of 14 articles on substitution groups in 1895-96. His publication record in the Monthly continued until 1933. With 70 articles, he holds the record for number of contributions to the Monthly, according to A Century of Mathematics: Through the Eyes of the Monthly (1994). He also served as an editor for the Monthly from 1909 to 1915. In a 1912 letter available in the MAA Records at the Archives of American Mathematics, H.E. Slaught wrote,

In fact, I do not know what we [the American Mathematical Monthly] should have done without the editorial co-operation of Professor Miller. He is doing, in my judgment, a very valuable piece of work. The articles which he contributes cannot fail to be of great value to the ordinary college teacher of Mathematics, and the spirit in which he does it is one of such power and devotion to the cause that it cannot fail to elicit the commendation of all who are disposed to look at the matter seriously.

Miller published approximately 820 scholarly articles, with about 450 of them on research and the remainder expository articles on group theory, mathematics, and the history of mathematics. He authored or coauthored four books.